Gaining access to the inner workings of a neuron in the living brain offers a wealth of useful information: its patterns of electrical activity, its shape, even a profile of which genes are turned on at a given moment. However, ...

For most of the past two million years, the human brain has been growing steadily. But something has recently changed. In a surprising reversal, human brains have actually been shrinking for the last 20,000 years or so. We ...

Whether you are an athlete, a musician or a stroke patient learning to walk again, practice can make perfect, but more practice may make you more efficient, according to a surprising new University of Colorado Boulder study.

Researchers have successfully reconstructed 3-D hand motions from brain signals recorded in a non-invasive way, according to a study in the March 3 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. This finding uses a technique that ...

(Medical Xpress) -- Stanford University researchers are enrolling participants in a pioneering study investigating the feasibility of people with paralysis using a technology that interfaces directly with the brain to control ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Two cardiothoracic surgeons at UC Davis Medical Center have performed the first robotic-assisted, multi-arterial, cardiac bypass procedure in California. The surgery, which took place in late January, is ...

In an ongoing clinical trial, a paralyzed woman was able to reach for and sip from a drink on her own  for the first time in nearly 15 years  by using her thoughts to direct a robotic arm. The trial is evaluating ...

Robotic arm

A robotic arm is a robot manipulator, usually programmable, with similar functions to a human arm. The links of such a manipulator are connected by joints allowing either rotational motion (such as in an articulated robot) or translational (linear) displacement. The links of the manipulator can be considered to form a kinematic chain. The business end of the kinematic chain of the manipulator is called the end effector and it is analogous to the human hand. The end effector can be designed to perform any desired task such as welding, gripping, spinning etc., depending on the application. For example robot arms in automotive assembly lines perform a variety of tasks such as welding and parts rotation and placement during assembly.

In space the Space Shuttle Remote Manipulator System also known as Canadarm or SSRMS and its successor Canadarm2 are examples of multi degree of freedom robotic arms that have been used to perform a variety of tasks such as inspections of the Space Shuttle using a specially deployed boom with cameras and sensors attached at the end effector and satellite deployment and retrieval manoeuvres from the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle.

The robot arms can be autonomous or controlled manually and can be used to perform a variety of tasks with great accuracy.

The robotic arm can be fixed or mobile (i.e. wheeled) and can be designed for industrial or home applications.